Normal outage day (to back up/clean up database) except sidious decided to take a lot longer than usual. We're talkin' 4 hours longer. This is probably due to a configuration change which keeps database tables in separate innodb files as opposed to interlaced within the same files. We'll see if it's worth keeping things this way, especially if it vastly increases the length of outages. Or maybe it was some other as-yet-undefined gremlin giving us a headache. We rebooted sidious after the backup just to be sure.

I put in the last tape image today that had yet to be split by both SETI@home Enhanced and SETHI (Eric and Kevin's hydrogen project - see Kevin's posts for more info). So now we're going back to splitting really old data that had only been analyzed partially by old versions of the classic clients, so there is some scientific merit for doing so. However, we're really pushing to get multibeam data out to the general public. I spent a chunk of the data fighting to compile the current code (mostly to ramp up on what Eric/Jeff have been doing so I can lend a programming hand). What's left to do is trivial on paper but pesky in practice.

In better news I finally implemented the "credited jobs" functionality in the public project, so the database is now filling with lots of extra data about who did which workunit. If all goes well I'll soon process the large backlog of such data (living in XML flat files on disk) and program some fun web site toys. I suggested a "pixel of the day" which picks a random spot on the sky, its current scientific interest (especially once Jeff's persitency checker gets rolling), and who looked there so far using BOINC. And that's just the beginning.

Based on user suggestion in the last thread (and then some Wikipedia research) I'd like to correct myself. I'm not a Luddite - I'm a Neo-Luddite. That is, somebody who isn't opposed to technology as much as upset about how technology brings out the worst in people. For example, I don't have a cell phone. It makes people rude, even you.

- Matt-- BOINC/SETI@home network/web/science/development person
-- "Any idiot can have a good idea. What is hard is to do it." - Jeanne-Claude

[...]
Based on user suggestion in the last thread (and then some Wikipedia research) I'd like to correct myself. I'm not a Luddite - I'm a Neo-Luddite. That is, somebody who isn't opposed to technology as much as upset about how technology brings out the worst in people. For example, I don't have a cell phone. It makes people rude, even you.

- Matt

Color me neo-Luddite as well, then...

I positively detest what cell phones have made of us, though I do not dislike technology as such - much the opposite. In fact, were it not for new technology, my job would be massively boring (or non-existent).

Please if this is something that gets your hackles up just sigh and move on. I don't want anyone to get upset. I would like someone to calmly give their actual reasons so that I can understand this touchy subject better.

I don't understand.

When I'm sitting in a public place with booths and I can see someone talking in their booth to someone else whom I can not see, I don't consider them rude. People have conversations all the time that exclude other people around them. It has to be that way to get anything done.

I think it's more the fact that many people tend to shout very loudly while on the cell phone (most times because reception is bad - but hey, if the person is having a hard time hearing you and it's an important conversation, don't you think you should call them back with a good line?), or the fact that people tend to be more into their phone conversation than into what's going on around them, particularly while in cars or public transit.

I can't tell you the amount of times I've seen people blow stop signs because they were on the phone, or have their legs up on a rail, blocking people from getting by on the train, which under normal circumstances one would simply move their feet without being asked but now requires the person to make a special request only to have the person on the phone roll their eyes at your obviously ridiculous request to bother them while they're trying to talk.

I submit that people cannot multi-task and still give 100% to each individual task (hence, multi-tasking, which usually makes it a 50/50 split or less). You cannot give 100% concentration to driving and also give 100% concentration to the phone conversation at hand. Something is bound to give and it is often the driver getting into accidents. My worst fear is something that has already happened in my area: a woman was on the phone with her daughter while her daughter was picking up her kids from school only to hear an abrupt scream and then sudden silence. The woman had died in a bad accident involving a trucker. I couldn't live with those kind of final moments stuck in my head.

Ok, I'm making this longer than I expected, but I hate cell phone rudeness too. However, I do own one, but I refuse to use it unless I'm in a private setting and not driving.

When I'm sitting in a public place with booths and I can see someone talking in their booth to someone else whom I can not see, I don't consider them rude. People have conversations all the time that exclude other people around them. It has to be that way to get anything done.

Why is it then rude to do the same thing using a phone?

The rudeness, IMNSHO, isn't that people are having a conversation which does not include the strangers around, it's _how_ they are using the cell phone.

For example, people who take or make calls in a movie theatre, a concert, school, church or similar audience-type mass gathering -- that's being rude to their fellow audience members. Or, when you are talking to them face to face and their phone rings, they don't even say "Excuse me please, I need to take this" -- that's just as rude as turning around and walking away in the middle of a conversation.

Also, studies show that we talk on cell phones louder than we actually have to to have the person on the other end hear us. Apparently it is somewhat instinctive when we can't see whom we are talking to. Problem is, a lot of people don't even try to moderate their volume and thus in a situation where it isn't rude to take a call, like at a public transit stop, that guy sitting on the bench next to me is being rather rude by essentially yelling in my ear and forcing me to hear his conversation because he's talking louder on his cell phone than he would be if he were talking to me. How many times have you been in line behind a person on a cell phone, and their turn comes up bu they don't realize it 'cause they are busy on a call -- they are being rude to everybody behind them by holding up the smooth flow of the line.

What's worse, if you try and point out their rudeness, like that time in the movie theatre I said to the guy in the row in front "I'm sorry, is the movie disturbing your phone call?", they look at you as if you're the one being rude. And time times when I've said "Excuse me," and pointed out to the person on the cell they it's their turn in line and they snarkily say something to the person on the other end like "this guy behind me in line can't handle waiting another 30 seconds" and continue to take another 3 minutes on the call before going to the wicket. Apparently it's rude of me to wait twice that 30 seconds and then step around them because the world revolves around the person on the cell phone, don'cha know. Unfortunately, situations like that are all too common, even stereotypical.

Now I'm anything but a luddite, neo or otherise, and I am lost without my cell phone, but I turn the ringer off in church, and I turn it off in class. I turned it off when I saw PotC3 on Friday night. I do my best to moderate my volume but knowing that I might fail I also step a few metres away from people so I don't fore them to listen to me if I do get louder. I always say "excuse me" if I decide to take a call when talking face to face with somebody and call comes, and I do my damnedest to make sure I pay attention when I'm on a call while standing in line.

I'm not perfect, but at least I try to be respectful of those around me -- which is something most cell phone users do not seem to do.

It's actually quite simple: Many many decades of social/cultural evolution has given us the pay phone booth. Notice how they were all the way over there, away from the center of activity, and usually somewhat sound proof. This creature thrived for a long time because it was well suited towards its environment, that is until the invasive species known as the cell phone drove it into immediate extinction. Things like this drive me nuts!

- Matt-- BOINC/SETI@home network/web/science/development person
-- "Any idiot can have a good idea. What is hard is to do it." - Jeanne-Claude

It's actually quite simple: Many many decades of social/cultural evolution has given us the pay phone booth. Notice how they were all the way over there, away from the center of activity, and usually somewhat sound proof. This creature thrived for a long time because it was well suited towards its environment, that is until the invasive species known as the cell phone drove it into immediate extinction. Things like this drive me nuts!

- Matt

Have you seen the new cell phone booths? Very similar to regular phone booths of yore but there's no phone inside. A perfect place for those that insist on being on the phone! They can do so inside one of the new booths, away from everyone else.

Of course, usage of a booth is completely voluntary and not often heeded.

I wouldn't mind the rudeness factor of people on their cell phone so much if it wasn't for the completely assinine drivel that comprises 99 44/100 ths % of the conversations you're forced to endure in public. ;-)

Never mind the techical reasons for it, but I am certainly happy that the FCC chose to NOT change their rules prohibiting the use of cell phones on board airborne aircraft. Can you imagine being stuck next to a long play salesman on a transcontinental flight? They think air rage is bad now! :-)

Sounds like your upset at rude people who happen to have cell phones, but I suspect stronly that my opinion on this is very colored by not doing any of the things that people are listing. (As far as I can tell).

In better news I finally implemented the "credited jobs" functionality in the public project, so the database is now filling with lots of extra data about who did which workunit. If all goes well I'll soon process the large backlog of such data (living in XML flat files on disk) and program some fun web site toys. I suggested a "pixel of the day" which picks a random spot on the sky, its current scientific interest (especially once Jeff's persitency checker gets rolling), and who looked there so far using BOINC. And that's just the beginning.

... and program some fun web site toys. I suggested a "pixel of the day" which picks a random spot on the sky, its current scientific interest (especially once Jeff's persitency checker gets rolling), and who looked there so far using BOINC. And that's just the beginning.

where can we/i veiw this "pixel of the day"? thanks

Read again... It's all in the future tense.

The first step is just being done in getting the data in place to then let those things happen when programmed up sometime 'soon-ish'.

Give poor ole Matt a chance! He's got to sleep sometime!!

In short, the Berkeley database is in the process of getting updated for new goodies in the furture.

Happy crunchin',
MartinSee new freedom: Mageia5
See & try out for yourself: Linux Voice
The Future is what We all make IT (GPLv3)

It's actually quite simple: Many many decades of social/cultural evolution has given us the pay phone booth. Notice how they were all the way over there, away from the center of activity, and usually somewhat sound proof. This creature thrived for a long time because it was well suited towards its environment, that is until the invasive species known as the cell phone drove it into immediate extinction. Things like this drive me nuts!

- Matt

Sorry, Matt - the "private" style phone booth was dead long B4 the cell phone, displaced by the "open" pay phone. Just an observation... I'd say the old glass-enclosed booths were mostly out of service by 1979, (usually because they were trashed and/or graffitti'd) and the cell phone didn't start to take off until (about) 1985. Just for fun, wanna see what the first portable CP's look like? See the first "Lethal Weapon" flick - Danny Glover totes around one of the old bricks....

Never mind the techical reasons for it, but I am certainly happy that the FCC chose to NOT change their rules prohibiting the use of cell phones on board airborne aircraft. Can you imagine being stuck next to a long play salesman on a transcontinental flight? They think air rage is bad now! :-)

Personally I think that the "technical reasons" that the FCC cited - viz. interference with aircraft operational frequencies, are a crock - CP's operate on the 850-900 Mhz band - and there is nothing that civilian aircraft use that operates anywhere near that band! (radar is up in the 2.5 Ghz range, radio communications are down in the 120 Mhz area [AM, BTW] and navigation is all over the place, depending on which system you're talking about... but none are near 850-900 Mhz!) (Mhz= MegaHertz, Ghz= GigaHertz. 1 Hertz = 1 cycle per second).

Have a cell phone because, unfortunetly, have to have one but I hate the thing. It is an electronic leash. I don't use the ringer, anywhere, though. In fact, never even answer my cell when someone does call. I let them leave a message. If the message is something to get back to, I will. If not, I won't.

My main cell annoyances with other people:

- Obviously, ring tones!

- The idiots who try to talk on their phone and drive, but can't.

- Intimate cell conversations while standing in line somewhere like at the grocery store.

- The growing number of people that use ear buds and microphones with their cell phones, walking around "talking to themselves". As George Carlin said, they look like schizophrenic air traffic controllers.

- When you are in a public place, such as a mall, and their is a large group of kids in front of you moving at a snail's pace because they are texting someone on their phones. Who are they all texting? Each other? The one kid that isn't there? They are all already in a large group, so why are they messing with their stupid phones, anyway? Why aren't they talking to each other?

--------------------
"Gentlemen, you can't fight in here. This is the War Room!"

Insurance studies have now shown that (in terms of your chance of having an accident) talking on a cell phone while driving is equal to having an intoxication level of .08% - past the legal limit in many states. Rudeness aside, that's enough reason to make it illegal for me.

For no reason than curiosity, one of the reasons we talk louder on mobile phones is because they have no "side tone". This is where a little of your own voice is fed back to you so you hear the other person and yourself, you then automatically compensate if your voice sounds too loud. Ordinary analogue land line phones all have this feature. There is probably a good reason why it is not implemented in digital systems, but I'm not sure what that is."Sometimes it is the people no one imagines anything of who do the things that no one can imagine."

For no reason than curiosity, one of the reasons we talk louder on mobile phones is because they have no "side tone". This is where a little of your own voice is fed back to you so you hear the other person and yourself, you then automatically compensate if your voice sounds too loud. Ordinary analogue land line phones all have this feature. There is probably a good reason why it is not implemented in digital systems, but I'm not sure what that is.

My bet (and it is just a guess) is that it is not implemented as it would require power from the battery, and battery life is one of the key selling points on such devices. Wouldn't need much, but every little bit helps.